Nest officially coming to the UK

At Pocket-lint, we’re big fans of Nest, a smart home thermostat that aims to save you money, while beautifying the tedium of adjusting the temperature of your heating. So when we saw the firm at a CES offshoot show, called The Digital Experience, we couldn’t resist asking when it would be bringing the device to the UK. Surprisingly, the representatives were happy to tell us that they’ve sworn to come to our fair shores this year. This is pleasing, because Nest is just about the smartest home gadget we’ve seen.

We asked what the issues were, what was holding up the gadget from going on sale in the UK, and the answers were surprising. The biggest is that in the US, heating and cooling systems generally operate on 24volts. This is, apparently, not the case in the UK. And secondly, of course, we have a different selection of heating systems, different integration and a general lack of air conditioning in homes. These issues make it harder to bring it to the UK.

We were also told that some Nest experts were in the UK at the moment, trying to work out how best to move forward with the system. They are looking at our crazy boilers and making plans to make our homes a little bit smarter. This apparently is something that hackers have been doing for a while, trying to get Nest to talk to heating systems not currently supported.